The amount that the Broward County School District has overpaid employees this year has ballooned to $2.8 million, officials confirmed Tuesday.

Board member Paul Eichner was incensed that the original figure of $2.1 million had grown by $700,000. "Why are we not able to stop the bleeding?" he asked.

Human error, not well-publicized computer software problems, appears to be at fault for much of the current overpayments, officials said. Clerks in schools and district departments persistently enter data incorrectly or delay turning in paperwork, administrators said.

"We have people who are not coding things and sequencing things properly," Superintendent Frank Till told the School Board.

For instance, staffers may wait weeks -- in one case two months -- before notifying the payroll department that employees have resigned, resulting in them being paid weeks after they quit.

Some errors may result from clerks not receiving enough training or any training at all on both the software and new processes that required an overhaul of the personnel system.

"The staff was not adequately trained to go online last July. There were assurances given to the board that everything was in place and we were ready to go," Eichner said.

Administrators hope that increased training this summer will end the problems, Till said.

But clerks at schools have blamed their inability to get advice and answers from the district's understaffed and unresponsive help desk, said board member Stephanie Kraft.

The district hopes to be able to recover most of the overpayments to current employees through negotiations one-on-one, but recovering money from former employees will be more difficult, Till said.

The county's largest employer with a work force of 26,000 has struggled with thousands upon thousands of errors in payroll checks since its glitch-ridden SAP computer software went online last summer, officials said.

The problems built to a crescendo in mid-November when about 100 bus drivers and attendants staged a wildcat sick-out to protest late checks.

Officials revealed in May that they were in danger of being unable to reconcile year-end financial records. Comptroller Ben Leong said Tuesday that reforms and new equipment may enable the district to meet its June 30 deadline for completing financial reports.

Sun-Sentinel

-- Anonymous, June 26, 2002